


Simple Mechanics

by whimsicalmuse



Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: M/M, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-23
Updated: 2004-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-07 16:00:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7720936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalmuse/pseuds/whimsicalmuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the Color Study Challenge at  lotrpschallenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Simple Mechanics

**Author's Note:**

> Note from Shirasade: this story was originally archived at the [Monaboyd.net Archive](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Monaboyd.net), which was closed in September 2014 due to software issues and a lack of new submissions for several years. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in October 2014. I e-mailed all authors about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Monaboyd.net Archive collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Monaboyd_Archive/profile).

It was a matter of simple mechanics really.

Why they fell into place where they did.

Why they fell into each other’s pockets when all was said and done.

It was a matter of simple mechanics, really, but it was a formula that was apparent to no one.

Yellow

“Yellow is the color of caution.” Dom announced with some pride, as he flicked his thumbs over his favorite shirt. “And it is definitely my color.”

Billy was inclined to agree.

When Bill was a lad he used to help his mum trim her roses, during happier times years before his parents drifted away.

She had rows and rows of bushes outside their modest house, and her favorites were the yellow rose bushes.

As a special treat, she would allow Bill to help her as she trimmed back thorns and gently pulled back wilted petals.

“They depress the other flowers,” she’d reasoned, as she snipped at the bushes, and Billy redoubled his efforts with a particularly large bloom that he secretly had come to favor.

It would do him no good to have his rose wilt and fade away.

But one day he forgot, and his bloom was overrun with wilted petals. He remembered how the bloom smelled deathly sweet in the warm spring sunshine. He’d worked to pull the folds back, certain he would reveal a fresh buttery petal, but it was not to be.

Dozens of petals later, all he found was a bee, who was angry to be disturbed. The stinger connected with the side of his finger, and a drop of blood landed on the last wilted petal, and Billy remembered staring at the blood and sparkling petal in the sunshine. His mum approached him, worried by his silence, but she was blacked out against the sun. He wanted to reach out to her, to show her his pain, but the sun was so bright and so hot, he worried if he reached for her, he’d come away with burnt fingertips and glare in his eyes.

“Yes, Dom. Yellow is certainly your color.”

White.

“What’s my color?” Billy asked Dom once, as they sat together on a couch.

Dom gave it some thought, and chewed on his lip, his eyes glazed over as his mind traveled.

Dom remembered lying on the grass in the summer, with his arms stretched out behind his head, looking at the shapes in the sky. Sometimes he’d see a flying circus, a boat, or floats from a parade, but usually he just saw shapes, drifting by in the cerulean sky.

He remembers sometimes he’d drift off, and dream of half-hidden wants, and when he’d wake up, he’d want to reach up and grasp at the bright clouds in the sky. He even tried once, in a sleepy haze, but all he came back with was a cold hand and a lump of disappointment in this throat.

“Yeah, Dom, what’s Bill’s color?” Ali chimed, as she placed a slim hand on Bill’s thigh.

Dom looked down at his hands, remembering the breeze against his ears, and how the soft he imagined the cloud would feel if he could just capture them in his fingertips.

“White.”

Billy smiled his face next to Ali’s and Dom remembered why he was such a fan of bright color.

If Ali was a canvas and Dom painted with Billy, the big picture would just disappear.

 

 

Pink

“I think my color is Pink,” Ian announced, and smiled as the expected laughter, as he leaned back and sipped his wine.

“Why Pink?” Dom replied, “Besides the obvious reasons, madam,” he teased and Ian lowered his lids, as he sank into thought.

“Because it reminds me of my mother,” he murmured, but he didn’t go on, he left them to their own thoughts, as he drifted into memory.

As a boy he was very fair—and prone to fits of spontaneous blushing, as this was years before he found a way to move against the tide.

The children teased him mercilessly, creating cruel nicknames but his mum never paid them any mind.

“You’re pink because you’re human, because you feel.” She would tell him, and then kiss him to get a rise out of his cheeks.

“See? You’re doing it now.” She’d then giggle, and brush her hands over his head, before slipping back to whatever it was she was doing.

And when he was really unwell or very distressed he’d call for her, and she’d be by his side. He could remember falling asleep at night, when his body ached and he was hot on the inside but cold, and his only focus would be on her small soft hands, as her fingertips brushed his round cheeks.

The last thing he’d always see before he drifted off to sleep was the pale pink shimmer of her nail polish.

Elijah’s laughter brought him back to the now, and he shook off the ghosts of the past, save for one—one he’d have to deal with at another place and another time.

Thinking of his mum, he’d come to realize something distressing: he couldn’t remember if he was still capable of turning pink.

Red

“My color is Red!” Announced Sean A., his round cheeks pulled back into a cracking smile, and his announcement earned fistfuls of popcorn tossed at his face.

“Why?” Elijah challenged.

“Because red is the color of celebration in China, and in my life I have much to celebrate.”

Elijah waved him off, “Braggart” and took a drag of his cigarette, prattling on about one thing or the other, but Sean didn’t hear him. He was fixated on the glow of the cigarette’s cherry.

“Don’t be a pain, Sean.” His mom used to say, with an exasperated voice as she tugged him by the arm. “You’re so damned slow all the time.”

He’d stumble just behind her, his gait made awkward by her tugging, but her bony fingers would never let go.

They’d never let go.

She’d all but toss him into the car, the back seat, and then she’d speed off.

“Gonna be late…” She’d mumble, around a freshly lit cigarette, and then take a long drag—so long she’d create a precarious line of ash.

The window would go down then, and in would come the gust of wind, whipping up around her face, her scarf, and her cigarette, and the cherry would be pulled off, fly back in the car, and land white hot against the smooth plane of Sean’s skin.

He remembered staring at the angry red welts that would boom on his cheek near his eye or the exposed thigh of his shorts. He vowed to mark each one, each day it happened, so that when he was grown he’d have a map to his battle scars.

When he was successful, see, he’d come back, show her where the red marks were, and claim his victory.

“Slow, but I made it!” He’d laugh in her face, and the thought was so appealing he almost wanted to do a dance.

“You alright there Sean?”

He blinked, and nodded, sipping his drink and waiting for the next on up, his thumb still rubbing the hardened patch of skin.

If he squinted he could still see red.

 

Black

 

“I’m all about black.” Orlando decided.

“You would be.” Billy teased. “Black’s a slimming color.”

“Very trendy” Dom added, and the two shared a snicker, but Orlando’s only reply was to flip them off.

Black was slimming, but it was better at hiding things, for which he was eternally glad.

With black on the world couldn’t see the skin underneath, and therefore they would have no questions to ask.

In black he could hide the bruises on his chest, when he wore tee shirts after the fall.

People wouldn’t have to see the ugly pucker from his stitches, and the blue black blood clots that bloomed just under the skin.

He remembers sliding on his shirt, and wincing past the pain—he was hurt—but he’d have to get better. He couldn’t spend the rest of his life bound to a chair he had things to do and none of those things allowed for him to stay like this.

So he set up a boundary—no room for failure, and like the ink in a typewriter, he ended the sickness with a solid black period.

The stage of his life was over.

He pulled on the black tee shirt the day he left the hospital, and when he got home, looked in the mirror, because he’d felt something damp on his skin. And when he pulled back his shirt, he saw dried blood had rubbed against him, but he wasn’t inclined to clean it up.

He couldn’t clean up something that was not supposed to be there, he just gritted his teeth, and went back to the crowd.

Besides, he reasoned, it was just blood. Blood that would stop flowing and harden and when it did, it would dry black, and blend right into the fabric.

*

“Okay? We ready to play?” Elijah chimed, clapping his hands together as he plopped his game piece onto the board.

“That we are,” Billy announced, scooting forward, to drop his piece—white—onto the board to join the others.

Elijah regarded the board for a moment musing on their selections.

It was a matter of simple mechanics really.

Why they fell into place where they did.

Why they fell into each other’s pockets when all was said and done.

It was a matter of simple mechanics, really but it was a formula what was apparent to no one.

Not even Elijah.

He began the game.


End file.
